Primal Leadership, With a New Preface by the Authors

PREFACE

WE’VE WRITTEN this book in large part because of the unprecedented, enormously enthusiastic reader response to the Harvard Business Review articles “What Makes a Leader?” and “Leadership That Gets Results.” But this book goes far beyond those articles to advance a new concept: primal leadership. The fundamental task of leaders, we argue, is to prime good feeling in those they lead. That occurs when a leader creates resonance—a reservoir of positivity that frees the best in people. At its root, then, the primal job of leadership is emotional.

We believe this primal dimension of leadership, though often invisible or ignored entirely, determines whether everything else a leader does will work as well as it could. And this is why emotional ...